Monthly Archives: August 2017

[Update: This assessment of the events in Charlottesville was originally posted on Monday, August 14. As of today, August 16, I have added some additional comments where indicated.]

I’m still trying to find out more about what happened in Charlottesville on Saturday. But from reviewing news reports on the incident from across the ideological spectrum, and speaking with people on “both sides” who were present at the melee, here are my initial thoughts.

It would appear from the contents of this manifesto that the Alt-Right has gone full National Socialist, which means that the Alt-Right is finished as potential prototype for a serious opposition movement from the Right in the United States. The Alt-Right may well thrive as a right-wing counterpart to the SJWs and Antifa in the future, and consequently create occasional ruckuses at its own rallies, or engage in street fights with leftist opponents. But what is contained in this manifesto is not marketable to a mass audience.

Additional commentary on the statement from Richard can be found here.

An equally serious issue is raised by this article by Vincent Law on the relationship between the Alt-Right and law enforcement. Clearly, the only critique of the police state that is being offered here is that the police are “not racist enough” (as opposed to the leftist claim that the police are “too racist,”), and are more concerned about protecting the state (i.e. “doing their jobs”) than assisting in the advancement of the Alt-Right cause. The fight against the police state must be a fundamental component of any kind of radicalism worthy of the name in the present day United States. The police are the front line guardians of the soft-totalitarian system (“anarcho-tyranny,” as the late paleconservative writer Sam Francis called it). This fact remains true even if one is not an anarchist or a libertarian.

Regrettably, neither the Left nor the Right has developed anything remotely approacing a comprehensive analysis of the police state and its workings in contemporary society. The Left simply advances a limited critique of the police as “too racist,” which ignores the fact that substantial numbers of law enforcement personnel and other “criminal justice” professionals are in fact people of color, and with the Left usually calling for a strengthening of the presumably “less racist” federal law enforcement in order to counter the presumably “more racist” local enforcement. Meanwhile, the only objection to the police state advanced by the Right appears to be regret that all law enforcement personnel are not more like Bull Connor, or that they are working for a government that is not sufficiently fascist. This is in spite of the fact that police state repression in the US now extends to all ethnic groups and even class positions, and even though most of our Alt-Right friends would be immediately purged by an actual fascist regime (see the fate of Ernst Roehm, Edgar Jung, Gregor Strasser, Ernst Niekisch, etc.).

For a discussion of what a more plausible right-wing opposition movement in the US might look like, check out this piece in the neocon house journal National Review by Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry. This article suggests that a Trumpized GOP might be able to position itself as an ostensibly “working class” (lower middle class) party in opposition to the Democrats’ emphasis on the economic and cultural values of the upper middle class in the manner of Marine Le Pen’s Front National. Even this is doubtful given that Trump has in fact pursued a fairly conventional Republican agenda, to the degree that he has an agenda as opposed to haphazard improvisations. A Trumpized Republican Party would essentially be the normal Republican Party, perhaps with a little more lip service given to economic nationalism and immigration restriction with little action in these areas, just as the GOP has retained the loyalty of the religious right for decades using the same the methods of rhetorical overtures and token gestures.

My 7th grade social studies teacher made us, the children of Guam, memorize the names of all 41 American presidents, whose portraits stared down at us in the furthest American territory from the White House. As I recited their names at home, my parents watched Bill Clinton play saxophone on television. “Are you voting for him?” I asked. My dad, wearing his Army t-shirt, said: “Didn’t your teacher tell you that our votes don’t count. It don’t matter that we’re citizens or veterans.”

A few years later, my family migrated to California, where I became a resident, graduated high school, and registered to vote. But after Al Gore lost, I learned that living in the states doesn’t guarantee your ballot will actually count. I learned how easy it is to memorize the name of a president who wages two wars and sharpens your island into a weapon. And isn’t that what an American president is: a name to which our lands and bodies are ultimately sacrificed.

When Barack Obama campaigned in 2007, his name gave me hope because it descended from slavery, from the civil rights movement, from a mixed raced family, from the Pacific. Yet Obama only visited Guam once. In 2011, his plane landed at night on the air force base, refueled, then departed. That’s when I learned the arc of history doesn’t bend justice towards Guam. I learned no matter what the president’s name is, he remains our commander, and our island remains a forgotten name.

Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, 21, perhaps the most recognizable person in the Portland area’s far-right activist circles, was issued a criminal citation for disorderly conduct in the second degree. His nose was bloodied and bruised in a fight with counterprotesters. Despite his cuts, he continued to participate in the protest until it dissolved around 6 pm, when Portland police detained and cited him.

Portland police made the decision not to arrest him on the misdemeanor charge because he needed to go to the hospital to get stitches from his injuries. Christopher Burley, a police spokesman, said the bureau is short on resources and couldn’t send an officer to accompany Toese through his hospital stay.

Poor Spencer Sunshine wants to have an “anti-fascism” theme party and no one wants to come. Maybe this guy needs to ask himself why, out of the 320 million people who live in the United States, it’s only a few thousand leftoidal nutcases that feel the need to get worked up about this stuff.

In practice, since February, few groups outside of antifascist circles have done national-level, longer-term, nuts-and-bolts organizing on the ground against the organized far-right groups. For example, there has been no new wave of regional anti-far-right groups like those which existed in the 1980s and ’90s. These groups did not engage in militant direct action but did build grassroots opposition to Nazi and Klan groups. But, outside of Redneck Revolt, there is not even a sustained effort to create online counter-propaganda. (Although one of the few initiatives by moderate groups has been to limit the far right’s use of social media and online fundraising platforms.) There have been localized demonstrations — in Portland in June after the murder of two men by an Islamophobic racist, and later in the month against a national day of Islamophobic rallies — but these haven’t gelled into any coherent organization or strategy.

In other words, nobody gives a fuck about this guy and his loopy cause. As Ted Kaczynski reminded us,

Because a few hundred people having an Un-PC theme party in the park threatens civilization, says antifa intellectual Matthew Lyons of the (ironically named) Ford Foundation-supported Political Research Associates. While I agree with much of this analysis, particularly points 2, 3, and 4 (with 1 being plausible and 5 being more often instigated by the antifa), here’s the money quote:

“And even a strong leader wouldn’t necessarily overcome the basic political differences separating Alt Rightists from their conservative fellow travelers. In the long run, if the Alt Right wants to coalesce with system-loyal rightists, it either has to win more people to its dream of right-wing revolution, or abandon it.”

In other words, there will be no right-wing revolution. The Alt-Right will become another Republican interest group, like the religious right before them. Look for the Alt-Right/Alt-Lite configuration to become the xenophobe and white identity politics wing of the Republican Party along side the foreign policy hawks, neocons, economic conservatives, social conservatives, and the religious right. And like the religious right, the right-wing establishment will throw them an occasional rhetorical bone and do nothing for them. As a Facebook commentator has said:

Not sure though why the GOP will ally with guys who largely don’t go to church, are economically left, oppose US intervention, and make for the least loyal Republicans. Ain’t gonna happen.

If the religious right couldn’t even restore school prayer, ban abortion, or prevent homosexual marriage, there is no way the Alt-Right will be successful in halting immigration. As the commentator said, it ain’t gonna happen.

I find myself having many of the same criticisms of the Alt-Right that Ernst Junger had of the Nazis.

“He also found Nazi ideology to be intellectually shallow, many of the Nazi movement’s leaders to be talentless and was displeased by the vulgarity, crassly opportunistic and overly theatrical aspects of Nazi public rallies. Always an elitist, Junger considered the Nazis’ pandering the common people to be debased…

He also dismissed their racism and anti-Semitism as ridiculous, stating that according to the Nazis a nationalist is simply someone who ‘eats three Jews for breakfast. He condemned the Nazis for pandering to the liberal middle class and reactionary traditional conservatives ‘with lengthy tirades against the decline in morals, against abortion, strikes, lockouts, and the reduction of police and military forces.'”

I can’t think of any time since the conspiracy trials of the late 1960s and early 1970s that there has been an effort to attack political freedom on this magnitude and in such a direct manner.

By David Cole and Faiz Shakir

Washington Post

David Cole is national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. Faiz Shakir is national political director of the ACLU.

The right to boycott has a long history in the United States, from the American Revolution to Martin Luther King Jr.’s Montgomery bus boycott to the campaign for divestment from businesses serving apartheid South Africa. Nowadays we celebrate those efforts. But precisely because boycotts are such a powerful form of expression, governments have long sought to interfere with them — from King George III to the police in Alabama, and now to the U.S. Congress.

The latest far-right march in Portland quickly staked a claim as the most violent.

The gathering of alt-right and white nationalist groups in Tom McCall Waterfront Park today immediately descended into brawling with antifascist counter-protesters that left several men bleeding and soaked in pepper spray.

“There is something not normal about a person who can read a defense of the stateless society and decentralization, secession, and self-determination as means of achieving it and immediately think Nazi because of a reference to the obvious reality of blood and soil.”

By Dan Phillips

The Liberty Conservative

Certain quarters of the libertarian universe are in an absolute tizzy because Mises Institute President Jeff Deist invoked “blood and soil” in a recent speech. In the minds of some PC brain-addled libertarians, this is clearly an indication that the speaker was dog whistling to Nazis. This is both profoundly clueless and shameless PC grandstanding.

Kissinger is almost enough to make me think there might be something to David Icke’s alien lizard people theory.

This man is one of the biggest scumbags the United States as a nation ever produced, but I’ve always appreciated his Machiavellian candor. If only all ruling class/power elite operatives were so forthcoming.

By Shehab Khan

The Independent

Henry Kissinger has warned that destroying Isis could lead to an “Iranian radical empire”.

The former diplomat has suggested that once Isis is defeated, if Iran occupies the free territory, the result could lead to the emergence of a new empire.

The 94-year-old, who was the Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon, also spoke about the complications of taking sides in Middle Eastern conflicts.

I have been a student of the prison system since I first entered it in 1957. I was around when a bread and water diet was part of the punishment process, and even had a taste of it. And I lived through major prison riots in Parkhurst, Hull and Strangeways, circa 1990.

Following the Woolf Report that followed the Strangeways riot a year later, a Guardian leader spoke of the “mandarins who condoned and defended a prison system that in all practical ways is an affront to our definition of civilisation.” Pre-riot, I spent years in the conditions that leader attacked, then served more time in the better environment that report brought about.

But I say, hand on heart, I have never seen the system in such a chaotic and dangerous state as it is now. Where to begin in chronicling the deep malaise? Soaring death rates, from homicidal, self-inflicted and natural causes; violence levels at an all-time high; prisons awash with drugs; and overcrowding and understaffing the norm in many jails.

The reason that the United States is presently so politically divided is that the power elite/ruling class are very divided, and the different factions of the power elite are trying to rally constituencies for themselves. Unfortunately, quite a few people seem stupid enough to fall for that shit.

The FBI raided the home of Paul Manafort, who had served as one of President Trump’s campaign chairs during the 2016 presidential race, late last month.

“FBI agents executed a search warrant at one of Mr. Manafort’s residences. Mr. Manafort has consistently cooperated with law enforcement and other serious inquiries and did so on this occasion as well,” said Manafort spokesman Jason Maloni.

Federal agents came to his home in Alexandria, Virginia last month in the predawn hours of July 26, The Washington Post reported Wednesday. This would have been a day after he met privately with the Senate Intelligence Committee. According to the Post’s report, the search warrant was wide-ranging and FBI agents left his home with various records.

The Senate Judiciary Committee had also subpoenaed Manafort to appear at a public hearing last month, but his attorney said that Manafort would be willing to provide a “single transcribed interview to Congress.”

New Mexico — A small community in New Mexico is learning firsthand the consequences of relying on corporate industry to fuel your economy. In the case of Torrance County, it’s the private prison industry. From a July 25 article by the Santa Fe New Mexican:

“The company that has operated a private prison in Estancia for nearly three decades has announced it will close the Torrance County Detention Facility and lay off more than 200 employees unless it can find 300 state or federal inmates to fill empty beds within the next 60 days, according to a statement issued Tuesday by county officials.”

The closure of the prison would mean a loss of about $700,000 in annual taxes and utility payments for the town of Estancia, which has a population of 1,500. Surrounding Torrance County would see a loss of around $300,000. Incidentally, the county has no jail of its own, meaning the sheriff’s department would have to find new housing for the 50 to 75 people it arrests each month.

“This is a big issue for us,” county manager Belinda Garland told the Santa Fe New Mexican. “It’s going to affect Torrance County in a big way.”

The corporate entity that operates the facility, CoreCivic — formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America — is the second-largest private prison company in the nation. CoreCivic spokesman Jonathan Burns said this of the closing:

An Oregon bill that passed last week makes possession of small amounts of drugs such as cocaine, shown here, a misdemeanor instead of a felony. (istock photo)

First-time offenders caught with small amounts of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other illegal drugs will face less jail time and smaller fines under a new bill approved by the Oregon legislature that aims to curb mass incarceration.

Where the foothills of Mount Kenya merge into the desert, the people of Samburu have maintained a strict patriarchy for over 500 years in northern Kenya. That is, until 25 years ago, when Rebecca Lolosoli founded Umoja village as a safe haven for the region’s women. Umoja, which means “unity” in Swahili, is quite literally a no man’s land, and the matriarchal refuge is now home to the Samburu women who no longer want to suffer abuses, like genital mutilation and forced marriages, at the hands of men. Throughout the years, it has also empowered other women in the districts surrounding Samburu to start their own men-excluding villages. Broadly visited Umoja and the villages it inspired to meet with the women who were fed up with living in a violent patriarchy.

Here we have an interesting spectacle where a culturally conservative paleolibertarian is criticizing a big corporation in the name of anti-political correctness, and a culturally leftist left-libertarian is defending a big corporation in the name of political correctness.

–This airing we have Keith Preston once again joining us. Keith is the chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com and the host of the “Attack the System” online podcast series. He is the founder and director of American Revolutionary Vanguard, a contributing editor at AltRight.com and a former instructor of sociology. Keith was awarded the 2008 Chris R. Tame Memorial Prize by the United Kingdom’s Libertarian Alliance for his essay, “Free Enterprise: The Antidote to Corporate Plutocracy.” His dissections of power structures in modern liberal democracies continue traditions of thought going back to both leftist and rightist social critics of the past. Keith is also a former regional delegate for the Industrial Workers of the World and a former member of the National Committee of the Workers Solidarity Alliance. We will be discussing Political Bipolarism & Duality of Man. Beyond the Matrix with Richard Kary on Truth Cat Radio – August 3, 2017 ~

Drug addiction and overdose deaths in the United States are a “serious problem” and the administration of President Donald Trump lacks any viable solutions to resolve the country’s opioid epidemic, according to an American analyst.

“It’s obviously true that drug addiction is a serious problem as far as the abuse of opioids and opioid-derivative substances like heroin and others,” said Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com.

“There’s a lot of reasons for that; a lot of it has to do with the fact that a lot of these drugs are used in the treatment as pain killers in medical treatment and people get addicted,” Preston told Press TV on Wednesday.

“As far as how to go about addressing the problem, the United States has been waging its war on drugs for about half a century now with absolutely no results,” he added. “The United States has just as much of a drug addiction problem today as it did way back in the late 1960s when President Richard Nixon first declared the war on drugs.”

“And if anything, the drug addiction issue is more serious now than it was back then, because not only do we have the opioid addiction problems, but we also have new kinds of opioids that are extremely lethal in terms of their potency,” he noted.